It was a normal Wednesday.Â I donâ€™t even remember anything special about the morning â€“ I went to work as usual.Â Left in the early afternoon to make the trip to my prenatal appointment.Â I was feeling especially large and definitely pregnant.Â I remember making a comment to a co-worker on the way out the door that it was the last of my â€œtwo-weekâ€ appointments before I would move to the one-a-week ones â€“ which was very exciting!
I met my husband in the parking garage and we walked into the office building.Â I checked in and sat down.Â I remember feeling normal.Â I got a text about a piece of foam I was trying to get for the... Read More

Â It was January 28th, my blood test came back positive and I was pregnant! Something I never thought was possible. I had two donated embryos transferred just eleven days before and now my dream of being pregnant and experiencing the joys that came with that were mine. My pregnancy was difficult from the start. I developed severe morning sickness which lasted 15 weeks, then developed a terrible stomach bug that sent my health into another downward spiral for several more weeks. I never developed an appetite until I was around 22 weeks pregnant. I finally began to feel better and gain weight. At my 28 week appointment everything looked great. I had... Read More

I'd had a friend who had been watching me very closely after we found out we were pregnant, she kept saying that she thought I was swelling too soon. I had asked the doctor MANY times about it and she just said I was fine but soon it was getting SO bad I wasn't really fitting in clothes that SHOULD have gotten me to 40 weeks (I like to prepare). The TED hose didnt seem to be helping and eventually I had coworkers doing a double-take as I walked down the hall, barely recognizing me.
About a week before my next check-up I just felt like something was terribly wrong. The best I can describe was that I felt like I was a ticking time bomb, SOMETHING was about to happen and it wasn't... Read More

I'm the mother of 3 young adults now, ages 24, 22 and 18. :-)
I had preeclamsia and HeLLP syndrome with my first and last pregnancies (which are my 2 sons). I did not have those complications with my daughter (now age 22), but I did have "undiagnosed" gestational diabetes with her.
Pregnancy #1: I was "Borderline" Gestational diabetic with him, and carried him full term. My water broke and I was not having much in the way of contractions, so my doctor had me wait 24 hours and then I went into the hospital and they put me on pitosin to get my contrations going. I started going down-hill during labor. I started running a fever, so they checked me (and the baby once he was... Read More

One day on our way to our final sign off of the wedding venue, my husband and I spoke about kids... not the first time though, but we both decided that we didn't want to wait. We have no reason.
That made me so excited cause I could not wait to be be a mommy. Â Well our wish came true not long after we returned from our honeymoon. Â All the normal signs was there and me and hubby decided that we gonna buy a home test... reading that the best time to do the test was first thing in the morning so we waited. That next morning bright and early I got up and did the test... few seconds went by the minutes and... Read More

When I was 7 months pregnant (32 weeks) I had nausea, feet & hand swelling, shortness of breath & acidity. My doctor had told me that they were the symptoms of pregnancy. Â Even my blood pressure was normal.
On November 2013, I had severe pre-eclampsia which led to convulsions, headache, blurring of vision & pulmonary edema (fluid in my lungs) and was rushed to ER. My condition was so bad that they could not wait to give steroids for the maturity of my babyâ€™s lungs. I was given MagnesiumÂ sulfate to prevent the occurrence ofÂ seizures. The baby was delivered... Read More

I am a 34 year old mother of 2. I say a mother of 2, because, even though you see only child in my arms, I have the privilege of having one with wings. Â
My daughter was born on June 25, 2009 via emergency c-section. Looking back now, it seems like a dream. I was oblivious to what was happening, but could see the fear in my husbands eyes. I remember trying to concentrate on hearing her, I couldn't wait to hear her first cries! It took a while, but there it was, my baby was here and perfect in every way. It's not the birth I had planned on, it's not the time she was expected. But, when the Dr. called and said it was the day, all the planning went out the window! I had... Read More

My pregnancy started like many others, I am sure.Â My husband and I were excited, scared, worried and in love.Â As our daughter grew, I went to all my routine Doctor's appointments with normal blood pressure readings, healthy weight gain and a strange feeling that our daughter would come early.Â My family has a history of itty bitty babies so when she was estimated to be 4lbs 3oz at 35 weeks, we weren't terribly worried but the yellow flag was up.Â Less than a week later, my right arm felt a little odd while I was trying to sleep so I shifted my weight and went to bed only to wake up around 1am with intense discomfort to my upper abdomen and my right shoulder was truly in... Read More

Hello,
Â This is Zainab here from Kuwait, a Gulf country.. I am 23 years old female married for 1.5 years now. I was 5 months pregnant when suddenly I got diagnosed with HELLP syndrome with having platelet count less than 57 and blood pressure more than 180.. I was admitted urgently to the hospital and they took the baby as the liver enzymes were also high and protein was found in the urine. Just after that, my counts and condition started to improve and BP too. Now I am completely fine. I lost my baby on Nov 12, 2013. I had a wonderful five months of pregnancy, I went for all my check-ups... Read More

About 17 weeks into my pregnancy, I experienced a day where I threw up all day long. I hadnâ€™t had morning sickness at all, so I was a little concerned, but Car and I assumed I had a 24-hour bug. The next day I didnâ€™t throw up, but I simply didnâ€™t feel well. I had a general feeling of unwellness from then on, but nothing specific.
At about 17.5 weeks, the pain started.Â At first I assumed the pain, which was located just below my sternum, was heartburn. Iâ€™d never had heartburn, but I couldnâ€™t imagine what else the stabbing pain could be, and everyone knows that pregnant women get terrible heartburn. The pain got progressively worse until I... Read More

I hardly noticed my swelling when it began, only that my ankles were stiff when I went up the stairs. I later thought it was normal pregnancy swelling. I had hit six months and had had a very easy pregnancy so far â€“ I was due for some of the rotten side effects. Gradually I puffed up, so slowly I didnâ€™t much notice, until it hit my face and others commented, causing me to look critically in the mirror for the first time. I called my doctor to make a note of the swelling, just for the sake of my records, because I knew my doctor liked to be very thorough in her notes. I had my next appointment in three weeks.
A little less... Read More

When you find out you are pregnant one of your first thoughts is of in 9 months time, walking out of the hospital with your little baby and taking them home. Not for a second do you imagine leaving the hospital without them and coming back to an empty house, while your little baby stays there in an intensive care unit.
Apart from slight morning sickness in the early stages my pregnancy had been perfect. My 21 week scan showed a healthy baby boy and we were thrilled.
All that changed on 28th August 2013 when I reached 27 weeks. I was at work when I discovered I was bleeding. I was taken to... Read More

It was October 2, 2013, the day I woke up with an excruciating toothache... yes, the wisdom tooth had begun giving me hell. At 25 weeks pregnant, I wanted to know what was causing so much pain literally overnight. I couldn't function at work; the pain was just too much to bear, plus the air condition system assisted in bringing on the pain. I went home and could only manage to eat crushed foods like irish potatoes and pumpkin; but even that was a chore.
The following day, I went to the dentist to see if there was anything he could do. The first dentist looked in my mouth and told me I had an impacted wisdom tooth and that he would have to refer me to another dentist who could... Read More

My husband and I got married in 2009. We wanted to have kids right away and living in Spain I got pregnant 6 months after we got married. The pregnancy was not what I expected. I felt so sick not just morning sickness but it was like my body had a really bad reaction to the pregnancy. I had headaches all the time and everything hurt. We use to live 30 meters from the beach and I use to go out to walk every day until i realized that every time I went to walk my hands got swollen, some people said that it was because of the ocean and the salt and to put my hands up when I walked, but it got to the point that I just could not walked any more, all my testing was perfect and because I was a... Read More

Mine was horrible. Ill try to keep it short without missing anything. I was 20 weeks or so, just found out it was a girl. I was visiting my family in California and had this awful fever, felt like crap, sweaty, plus a heat rash to the point of blisters. It hurt to walk, stand, everything. I went back to Nebraska and went to my drs appt a few days later. I had a fever of 102.7 and the doctor noticed my feet were swollen. There was no difference between leg, ankle, and that bend to a foot. So she ran some tests, finally was able to get back ahold of me and I was told I have blood clots. Clots going to my lungs and causing pneumonia. I had to rush to a hospital an hour away, get a... Read More

My daughter, Isabel, will be 1 in just a month. Last October, after my first 7 months of pregnancy being absolutely perfect, I began having an elevated blood pressure. At this point, I was having weekly check-ups. I wasn't so worried, my family (mother and teenage brothers) had just moved in with me, so I thought the high blood pressure was a result of stress. My doctor ordered me on modified bed rest, and to have Non-stress tests at the hospital twice a week. My blood pressure never went down, but it wasn't so high that they were too worried just yet. My doctor did find protein in my urine, so i had to collect my urine for 24 hours and take it back. The results of that urine weren't too... Read More

Hi, I'm Latavia and I had a near death experience with preeclampsia. I was 8 months pregnant when I discovered my life would change forever. I went for a regular check up and noticed I was a little more swollen then usual. My doctor didn't think much of it because swelling was normal in a pregnancy. He put me on bed rest and told me to start eating healthier, less salt. He also took me out of school being that I was young I missed a lot. Weeks went by and the swelling had gotten a lot worse from my first visit. My next visit came around and my blood pressure was sky high. My face was swollen, my eyes, my hands, my arms, my feet. I was admitted into the hospital... Read More

What was supposed to be a normal Sunday turned into the worst day of my life. But first, Iâ€™ll tell you how my pregnancy was going. I was 20 years old living with my fiance, Dante, at the time. I worked 40 hours a week on my feet most of the time. I started swelling early in my pregnancy and it was summer time so we werenâ€™t that worried then. Come around my 28-32 week mark, I was severely swollen and was gaining a lot of weight. I had asked my doctor to check further into pre-eclampsia but he assured me everything was â€œnormalâ€. Being a new and young mom I trusted him when I should have trusted my gut.
Â On Sunday,... Read More

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